Politics and Prose Bookstore Applies for Liquor License

“Carla Cohen died in October 2010, and in June 2011, Politics & Prose was purchased by Bradley Graham and Lissa Muscatine. Brad was a longtime journalist with The Washington Post. His wife, Lissa, also worked as a Post journalist for a number of years, and then served as a speechwriter to Hillary Clinton at both the White House and the State Department.”

I hadn’t heard about any changes until now. They’ve recently applied for a liquor license:

“The nature of the business is a bookstore. Entertainment consists of poetry readings and author presentations. Food will be light, consisting of pre-packaged, ready to eat items.

“look for new ways to make books a popular entertainment to compete with other leisure activities. We will continue to explore links between books and travel and the arts, as well as books that help us understand ourselves and our world. We will be planning trips, meals together, movies, music, and other activities that enrich our lives.”

But it bugs me that so much leisure activity in DC revolves around booze and drinking. I’ve never been in a place where so many people spend so much time and money getting trashed, seemingly every night.

Just got back from a trip to Italy. There alcohol is available at every deli, coffee shop, and Mom’n’Pop kiosk. But I rarely saw anyone drinking anything other than expresso, or maybe a glass of wine with dinner. It’s a bit depressing to think of the wasted time and wasted brain cells associated with the DC lifestyle.

Unfortunately (or fortunately), alcohol is just about the only surefire way for a business to be profitable in DC. Because of high rents. So a failing business like a niche bookstore has to do this in order to survive.

Right. P&P has always had food downstairs, and pretty good food, too. But it’s almost more of an entertainment space than it is a bookstore. I don’t anticipate people book shopping with a beer, but I could see people sipping a glass of wine during a poetry reading (which is no different than my college poetry readings, which featured top poets and a few bottles of wine in the back of the room).

Public drunkeness is certainly frowned upon in certain segments of Europe but that does not mean that people aren’t privately getting smashed. It is not that they are more evolved, just maybe more discrete.

I know JM’s going to catch a lot of flak, but I can’t help but agree — perhaps not on the differences between DC and Italy, but certainly on the way leisure in this town so often revolves around alcohol.

As a twenty-something and a recovering alcoholic with less than 90 days of sobriety, I can tell you it’s tough to stop, you know, killing yourself with booze in DC if you want to maintain any semblance of a social life.

I understand why Politics and Prose is opting for a liquor license and would have been thrilled about it mere months ago, but now I’m sad to bid adieu to a place where I can go without worrying about feeling triggered to drink.

I’m sorry, I was just in Italy and people drink everywhere. Beer with lunch, glass of wine in the afternoon. The problem in DC and the US in general is that people think it’s an all or nothing approach…”oh crap, I can’t get booze somewhere else so let me down as much of it as I can, while I can.” However, it doesn’t seem to be the case here. Though I’ve gotta say, in my experience, I’ve been in DC now for almost 5 years and my lifestyle has definitely changed from the getting hammered on a Tuesday night to having a drink or two at a reception or wine with my meal. A lot of events do have booze, but beyond the early 20s crowd (and the older ones who refused to mature past their early 20s), not many people get trashed on a regular basis.